Image Transfer in Wireless Sensor Networks A.A.Shahidan, N.Fisal, A.H.A.H.Fikri, Nor-Syahidatul N.Ismail and Farizah Yunus UTM-MIMOS Center of Excellent, Faculty of Electrical Engineering Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia ashahidan@utm.my, sheila@fke.utm.my, hadifikri@gmail.com, syanadia@fkegraduate.utm.my, farizah@fkegraduate.utm.my Abstract— Image transfer in Wireless sensor Network (WSN) is very useful for information gathering since information obtained from analysis of the images is significant in certain situation. In general, WSN utilize an eight bit microcontroller and IEEE802.15.4 compliant radio for processing and transferring the data to remote location. These specifications posed a serious restriction in transferring multimedia data since it require a huge bandwidth and processing capabilities. The purpose of this project is to develop the image transferring mechanism for realizing JPEG motion data transfer in WSN where the video is basically generated from the sequence of compressed image. Hence, image sequence transfer with data buffering mechanism is implemented. The scope covers developing sensor node circuit which is equipped with external memory and designing software for the sensor node which is capable to functioning as intended. Image sequence is produced at the control station after processing the received data. Keywords-Image Sequence; Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks; Wireless Sensor Networks 1. Introduction Since a few years ago, wireless sensor network technology has been developed. Research communities give their attention on developing wireless sensor network for many purposes. The introduction of the wireless sensor network has become a new paradigm in information-gathering method. This is because wireless sensor network consists of many self-organized sensing nodes that cooperate with each other to gather information [1]. Each node is equipped with devices which are used to monitor and collect the data, process the collected data and then transmit the data to the adjacent nodes. There are many applications of wireless sensor network such as multimedia surveillance sensor networks; traffic avoidance, enforcement and control systems; advanced health care delivery; automated assistance for the elderly and family monitors and many more [2]. Such various applications have lead toward designing many type of sensor node. One of them is the sensor node with built in camera. This kind of node is developed after the availability of small size and low price new CMOS technology camera in the market. The camera has the ability to capture still image and also video stream from the environment. The development of this kind of sensor node has enhanced the wireless sensor network capability in its application [3]. However, the development of sensor node with image sensor is not complete if the sensor node has limited capacity of temporary storage. This is because handling the data in form of image usually required large buffer to store large size of data. Therefore, it is favorable to have a sensor node with image sensor and a large buffer size. Users now can obtain the visual data instead of the scalar data which is in form of numbers and graph. The example of the developed sensor nodes related to data buffer and image sensor are eCAM, Cyclops, TelG and RISE [4, 5, 6, 7]. IEEE 802.15.4 compliant radio is widely used for WSN implementation because of its low cost, and low power attributes [8]. The standard specified that the maximum data rate that may be achieved is up to 250kB/s only. Therefore, the data that need to be transmitted is usually small. For multimedia data, the data rate is considered to be too slow. Hence, the data that need to be transmitted must be compressed or coded in such a 158 2011 International Conference on Communication Engineering and Networks IPCSIT vol.19 (2011) © (2011) IACSIT Press, Singapore